Down River Part 29

Six million dollars, she'd said. Based on the latest offer.

What the h.e.l.l?

I copied the deed book and page numbers onto a piece of sc.r.a.p paper and replaced the map on its rack. I went to the counter, spoke to a woman. She was middle-aged and round. Thick blue powder rimmed the hollow s.p.a.ce beneath her eyebrows. "I'd like to see the deed for this parcel of land," I said, and slipped the sc.r.a.p of paper onto the counter between us. She did not even bother to look down.

"You need the Register of Deeds, sugar."

I thanked her, went to the Register of Deeds office, and spoke to another woman behind another counter. I gave her the numbers and told her what I wanted. She pointed to the end of the counter. "Down there," she said. "It'll take a minute."

When she reappeared, she had a large book under her arm. She dropped it onto the counter, slipped a thick finger between two pages, and opened the book. She thumbed pages until she found the right one, then spun the book to face me. "Is that what you want?" she asked.

It was a deed of transfer dated eighteen years ago. I skimmed the language; it was straightforward. My father had transferred two hundred acres to Dolf.

"That's interesting," the woman said.

"What?"

She put the same thick finger on the deed. "No tax stamps," she said.

"What do you mean?"

She huffed, as if the question weighed heavily on her. Then she flipped back a few pages to another deed. On the top corner was affixed a number of colored stamps. She pointed. "Tax stamps," she said. "When land is purchased a tax is paid. The stamps go on the deed." She flipped back to the deed that transferred two hundred acres of Chase land to Dolf Shepherd. She put her finger on the corner. "No stamps," she said.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

She leaned down to read the name on the deed. "It means that Adolfus Shepherd didn't buy this land." I opened my mouth to ask the question, but she forestalled me with an upraised hand and a puff of cigarette breath. She leaned into the deed again, plucked off another name.

"Jacob Chase gave it to him."

Outside, the heat tried to weigh me down. I looked up the street to the next block, where the courthouse sat, timeless and spare under the white sun. I wanted to talk to Rathburn. He'd been at the farm, trying to speak to my father about something. And there was something about Dolf, too. What was it that my father had said? I stopped on the sidewalk, tilted my head as if to better hear the words: And don't you go talking to Dolf about this either. What I say goes for him, too.

Something to that effect.

I pushed my feet up the sidewalk, toward the jail. It rose, hard-edged and graceless, with windows as narrow as a woman's face. I thought of Dolf, rotting inside, then was past, and moving up the courthouse stairs. The judge's chambers were on the second floor. I had no appointment, and the bailiffs at security knew d.a.m.n well who I was. They sent me through the metal detector three times, patted me down so well that I could not have slipped a paper clip past them if I'd put it in my underpants. I took it, like I could take it all day. Still, they hesitated; but the courthouse was public domain. They lacked the authority to keep me out.

The judge's chamber was a different story. It was easy to find-up the stairs, past the D.A.'s office-but getting in was another matter. Nothing public about chambers. You got in if the judge wanted you in. The door was made of steel and bulletproof gla.s.s. Two dozen armed bailiffs guarded the building, and any one of them would take me down if the judge told him to.

I looked up and down the empty hall. Beyond the gla.s.s, a small woman sat behind a desk. She had a tea-colored face, yellow hair, and severe eyes. When I rang the buzzer she stopped typing. The eyes focused, she lifted a finger, then left the room as fast as her swollen legs could s.h.i.+ft her.

Gone to tell the judge who'd come calling.

Rathburn had on a different suit, but looked about the same. A little less sweat, maybe. He studied me through the gla.s.s, and I could see the wheels turn. After a few seconds, he whispered to his secretary, who put her fingers on the phone. Then he opened the door. "What do you want?"

"A minute of your time."

"On what subject?" His gla.s.ses flashed, and he swallowed. No matter the verdict, he thought I was a killer. He stepped forward until his body filled the crack in the door. "Are we going to have a problem?"

"Why did you come to see my father the other day? That's what I'm here to talk about."

"You can have one minute," he said.

I followed him past the small woman with the hard eyes and stood in front of his desk as he closed the door down to a crack. "She's looking for an excuse to call the bailiffs," he told me. "Don't give her one."

He sat and I sat. A light sweat appeared on his top lip. "What was the argument about?" I asked. "You and my father."

He leaned back and scratched at his toupee with a finger. "Let's get one thing straight first. The law is the law and the past is past. You're in my chambers and I'm the judge. I don't do personal in chambers. You step over that line and I'll have the bailiffs in here so fast you won't believe it."

"You locked me up for murder. You locked Dolf up for murder. Hard to keep that from being personal."

"Then you can leave right now. I don't owe you anything."

I tried to calm down. I told myself that I came here for a reason.

The judge's face had gone dark red. A chair creaked in the other room. I leaned back, breathed in, breathed out, and he smiled in a way that made me queasy. "That's good," he said. "That's better. I knew that somewhere there was a Chase that could be reasonable." He smoothed his polished, white hands across the desk. "If you could just talk your father into being equally reasonable."

"You want him to sell?"

"I want him to consider the well-being of this county."

"That's why you went to see him?"

He leaned forward and cupped his hands as if he were holding some great jewel. "There is opportunity here. Opportunity for you, for me. If you could just talk to him...."

"He knows his own mind."

"But you are his son. He'll listen to you."

"That's why you agreed to see me? So I could talk to my father?"

His face closed down, smile gone. "Somebody needs to make him see reason."

"Reason," I said.

"That's right." He tried another smile, but it failed. "Things have gone from bad to worse for your family. Seems to me that this is the perfect opportunity to steer your family in a better direction. Make some money. Help the community..."

But I didn't hear all that. My mind was stuck. "Bad to worse..." I repeated the phrase.

"Yes."

"What do you mean?"

He opened his hands, lifted the right one, palm up. "Bad," he said, then lifted the left hand. "Worse."

I pointed at the right hand, knew that he could read the tight anger in my voice. Knew that he enjoyed it. "Start with the bad," I said.

"I'll start with the worse." He jiggled that hand. "Another loved one in jail for murder. People getting killed and hurt on the property. An angry town-"

"Not everybody feels that way," I interrupted.

He tilted his head, continued in a louder voice. "Risky business decisions."

"What risky business decisions?"

His mouth twitched at one corner. "Your father's in debt. I'm not sure that he can pay."

"I don't believe it."

"It's a small town, Adam. I know a lot of people."

"And the bad?" I asked.

He lowered his hands, took on a pained expression that I knew was false.

"Do I really need to explain it?"

I bit down, hard.

"Your mother was a beautiful woman...."

He was twisting the knife for his own satisfaction. I saw that and refused to partic.i.p.ate. I came to my feet, raised a finger, then turned and walked away. He followed me into the antechamber. I felt him behind me as I pa.s.sed his secretary's desk. "Bad to worse," he said, and I turned to face him. I don't know what his secretary saw on my face, but she was dialing as I closed the door behind me.

CHAPTER 23.

My father was drunk. He was alone in the house and he was hammered. It took about three seconds for me to figure that out, mainly because I'd never seen it before. His religion was work to excess and all other things in moderation, so that in the past, when I'd come home drunk and b.l.o.o.d.y, his disappointment shone out like holy fire. This thing that I saw now... it was new and it was ugly. His face was loose and drawn, eyes gone wet. He filled the chair like he'd been poured into it. The bottle was open and close to empty, the gla.s.s down to half a finger. He stared at something in his hand, and strange emotions moved in him so that his features seemed to flow across the bones of his face. Anger, regret, remembered joy. It was all there in staccato bursts, and it made him look like a soul unhinged. I stood in the door for a long time, and I don't think he blinked once. Were I to close my eyes, I would see the color gray touched with small, cold yellow. An old man in a fractured slice of time. I had no idea what to say to him.

"Kill any dogs this morning?"

He cleared his throat and his eyes came up. He opened the desk's drawer and slipped whatever he'd been holding inside. Then he closed the drawer with something like care and shook his head. "Let me tell you something about scavengers, son. Only a matter of time before they find a streak of bold."

I didn't know if he was talking about the dogs or the people who wanted him to sell, men like Zebulon Faith and Gilley Rat. I wondered if new pressures were being brought to bear. a.s.sault and murder. Dolf in jail. Debt ramping up. What forces now conspired against my father? Would he tell me if I asked, or was I just one more complication? He found his feet and steadied himself. His pants were wrinkled and muddy at the cuffs. His s.h.i.+rt hung out of his belt on one side. He twisted the cap back onto the bourbon and walked it over to the side bar. The day had put a new bend in his back and three decades onto the way he walked. He put the bottle down and dropped a hand around its neck. "I was just having a drink for Dolf."

"Any word?"

"They won't let me see him. Parks went back to Charlotte. Nothing he can do if Dolf won't hire him." He stopped by the side bar, and his pale whiskers caught that small, yellow light so perfectly that it could have been the only color left in the world.

"Has something changed?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Strange things can happen in the human heart, Adam. There's power there to break a man. That's all I know for certain."

"Are we still talking about Dolf?"

He tried to pull himself together. "We're just talking, son." He looked up and straightened a framed photograph on the wall. It was of him and Dolf and Grace. She was maybe seven, teeth too large for her face, laughter all over her. He stared at her, and I knew.

"You told Grace, didn't you?"

His breath leaked out. "She should hear it from someone who loves her."

Sudden despair filled me. Dolf was all she had, and as tough as she pretended to be, she was still a kid. "How is she?"

He sniffed and shook his head. "As far from Grace as I've ever seen her."

He tried to lean a hand on the side bar, but missed. He barely caught himself. For some reason, I thought of Miriam, and how she, too, tottered at the edge of some dark place. "Have you spoken to Miriam?" I asked.

He waved a hand. "I can't talk to Miriam. I've tried, but we're too different."

"I'm worried about her," I said.

"You don't know anything about anything, Adam. It's been five years."

"I know that I've never seen you like this."

Sudden strength infused his joints; pride, I suspected. It stood him up and put a copper flush on his face. "I'm still a long way from having to explain myself to you, son. A long G.o.dd.a.m.n way."

"Is that right?"

"Yes."

Suddenly, the anger was mine. It was raw and laced with a sense of injustice. "This land has been in our family for more than two centuries."

"You know that it has."

"Pa.s.sed down from generation to generation."

"d.a.m.n right."

"Then why did you give two hundred acres to Dolf?" I asked. "How about you explain that."

"You know about that?"

"They're saying it's why he killed Danny."

"What do you mean?"

"Owning that land gives Dolf a reason to want you to sell. If you sell, he can, too. Grantham thinks that maybe Dolf was killing cattle and burning buildings. Maybe even writing those threatening letters. He has six million reasons to do something like that. Danny worked the farm, too. If he caught Dolf working against you, then Dolf would have reason to kill him. It's one of the theories they're pursuing."

His words slurred. "That's ridiculous."

"I know that, d.a.m.n it. That's not the point. I want to know why you gave that land to Dolf."

The strength that had so suddenly filled him vanished. "He's my best friend and he had nothing. He's too good a man to have nothing. Do you really need to know anything more than that?" He lifted the gla.s.s and knocked back the last slug of bourbon. "I'm going to lie down," he said.

"We're not finished here."